Meltblowing is a process for manufacturing nonwoven products by extruding molten thermoplastic resins through fine capillary holes (orifices) and blowing hot air on each side of the extruded filaments to attenuate and draw down the filaments. The filaments are collected on a screen or other suitable collection device as a random entangled nonwoven web. The web may be withdrawn and further processed into consumer goods such as mats, fabrics, webbing, filters, battery separators, and the like. Also, the consumer goods may be produced in line with the meltblowing line.
As indicated above, the present invention relates to the post-treatment of nonwoven webs to alter the filament spacing and structure of the webs. It should be observed that the terms "filaments" or "fibers" are used interchangeably herein, although "fibers" in nonwovens generally refers to discontinuous strands and "filaments" as continuous strands. The present invention contemplate webs with continuous filaments and/or discontinuous fibers.
Since the development of the meltblowing process by the Naval Research Laboratory in 1951 (published in 1954 by the U.S. Department of Commerce in an article entitled "MANUFACTURE OF SUPERFINE ORGANIC FIBERS"), there has been a considerable effort by several companies operating in the industry to find new uses for the nonwoven product having microsized fibers. Because of the random, geometric assembly or structure of the fibers, and relatively small fiber size, the fibers have received extensive use as filters.
In the formation process for most random laid or unordered fibrous webs, the pore size that develops is inversely related to the square of the fiber diameter. The spunbonded process is distinguished from meltblowing by self-bonding and non uniform draw down (plastic deformation) of filaments forming the web. Thus meltblown webs have a relatively broad distribution of fiber diameters. Typical nonwoven webs produced by meltblowing have fiber diameters of 0.5 to 20 microns, preferably 0.5 to 8 microns, making them suitable for filtering out 5 micron particles at 80 percent efficiency or greater. It is known that filtration can be improved by practicing the web formation process to produce smaller and smaller diameter fibers while controlling other formation parameters such as porosity and thickness. As noted above, this results in smaller pore size thereby improving the efficiency of particle removal in filtration. By operating the meltblowing process under extreme conditions, the fiber size can be produced in the order of 0.1 to 5 microns. The process, however, has the following disadvantages: low production rates, high energy usage. In order to improve the properties of the nonwoven web, efforts have been made to post-treat the webs by a variety of processes. Such efforts have included post calendering the web to improve, the tensile strength of the web, post electrification as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,592,815 to improve filtration performance of the web, to name but two of such efforts. It is significant to note that none of these prior art techniques have been directed specifically at planar consolidation to reduce the size of the pores in the web.
Calendering of nonwovens flattens fibers and consolidates the web in a direction normal to the plane of the web and reduces the thickness. This, however, leads to reduction in permeability which is an important property to conserve for many filtration purposes. U.S. Pat. No. 4,048,364 discloses a process for drawing the meltblown web in the machine direction (MD) to produce a ten-fold increase in the tensile strength of the post-drawn web. It is significant to note, however, that the precursor web required in this invention contains relatively coarse fibers (10 to about 40 microns average fiber diameter) and polymer of low crystallinity. Low crystallinity generally means about 22% or less. The extensive drawing of the web reduces the diameter of the fibers in the machine direction to an average diameter of 1 to 8 microns at draw ratios ranging from 2:1 to 10:1 and preferably 5:1 to 7:1. The main purpose of the process is to increase the molecular orientation to enhance the strength of the greatly drawn fibers. Precursor webs of very high post processing draw ratio capability are required in order to prevent rupture of fibers in the web drawing process. Tests have shown that the stretching of a precursor web having hot (e.g., 10.degree. F. less than the melting point of the precursor web) drawing capabilities from about 5:1 to 10:1 does not alter the measure of pore size of the web. This is probably due to the fact that the high and easy drawability of the fibers prevents the development of sufficient, compressive forces to bend the stout fibers in the web and physically reduce its pore dimensions and measures of pore size distribution in general.